Calle de San Felipe

The sign invokes a Saint Philip, but the municipal records make clear neither which one nor why this Castillejos street was dedicated to him. The bare name, with no surname, points to the apostle Philip, born in Bethsaida on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, one of the Twelve who followed Jesus. Tradition has him preaching across Asia Minor and dying in Hierapolis, hung upside down. In 2011 a team of Italian archaeologists announced they had found his tomb beneath the ruins of the city, next to the white terraces of Pamukkale. He should not be confused with Saint Philip Neri, the sixteenth-century Florentine who founded the Oratory; the street carries no such surname, and nothing lets us safely assign it to him. The street belongs to a part of Tetuán born from a military camp and grown without any planned layout, where the names of saints abound. A short stretch that crosses calle de San Germán on its way to plaza de Ángel Carbajo.